Pasco County’s Energy and Marine Center is located on a coastal hammock on the Salt Springs Run Estuary in Port Richey, Florida. This facility is ideal for activities involving coastal ecology, wetlands, marshlands, and estuarine environments. Here Salt Spring drains into the Gulf of Mexico providing comparisons between freshwater and saltwater environments. The center is surrounded by marsh grasses, three species of mangrove, and oyster bars. Frequent visitors to the center outside of the students, includes raccoons, foxes, armadillos, marsh hares, marsh periwinkles, egrets, herons, stingrays, fiddler crabs, turtles and tortoises, dolphin, the occasional manatee, and much much more.